


Carmine

by milkygae



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gen, Hallucinations, Magical Realism, Multi, Other, Surreal, This doesn’t really have any specifics..
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28754709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkygae/pseuds/milkygae
Summary: The words smear onto the canvas. Screams ripping their way through the blue, in vibrant splatters of red. They take the shape of a girl. A girl who visits only in dreams, and a girl who is a dream.
Relationships: Dot Campbell/Fatin Jadmani, Fatin Jadmani/Leah Rilke, Martha Blackburn & Toni Shalifoe, Martha Blackburn/Nora Reid, Nora Reid/Leah Rilke, Rachel Reid & Nora Reid, Rachel Reid/Leah Rilke, Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	Carmine

**Author's Note:**

> This was written set in The Wilds universe, yet I didn’t specify who. Any guesses? Okay nevermind that was very awkward. This was written at 12 pm in a haze of bad decisions so.. ENJOY 🙌🙌😍

Her blood is coursing, heart pounding. Her fingers grip the cool tile and something sticky seeps into her thin shirt. She would be in pain she thinks, if her mind weren’t somewhere else.

“She is dreaming,” she screams or perhaps that part is a dream as well. Voices float in and out of her perephereal, yet the words shift, just out of her reach. The voices blend to color and she scrabbles to grab the faded remnants of them. Her arm does not cooperate. It tingles and stings, useless, another reminder of what she cannot do. 

A cool breath travels down her spine, and she turns, only to drown in startlingly close eyes. It is her. It is her! She opens her mouth to beg, to plead, that this time, this time she does not leave, but all that comes out is a garbled mess of sounds. The girl giggles and just like that, the memory is gone. She struggles to hold the image, visualize it like she did a shooting star when they were young, and wishes weren’t just false hopes. The giggles play on loop, her taunting smile bleeding at the edges. No. No. No.

She cannot be forgotten and she cannot forget. Too many lost to the gnarled fingers of the past. She tries to recall their names, but they are sheltered by the pressing feeling of doubt. Doubt that they are or were real. Doubt that she is real. She doubts that it matters. 

Her brain takes her apathy as an opportunity to torture her with again what she cannot have. A pool sparkles in a setting sun and in another lifetime she’s sure there would’ve been someone else there too, but for now it is just her and the cool, cool caress of the water. Except in her vision she hasn’t entered the oasis yet, it still sits untouched, a mirage. So what is it that drips down her back and winds through her legs, tasting vaguely of salt. Her first thought is sweat. An echo of days where sand fills the cracks and nothing hurts, of days filled with so much light even The Darkness can’t penetrate. 

She’s slipped again, she seems to be doing that more often. Or maybe she just forgets the times she doesn’t. She wonders what that would be like, to have something solid to grasp.

Her mind echoes “You did once, you did once.”

The girl teases her with a feather light touch and a biting grin. She ignores her this time. 

“She is just a phantom, of what you had and cannot have anymore,” she repeats, knowing full well she’ll never truly believe that.

Blindly, she gropes for something, anything that isn’t tainted and stained by the girl’s touches. A flailing fist makes contact. 

Her stiff fingers find it difficult at first to wrap around the object, but it’s familiarity eases them into a sturdy grasp. No. This is  _ too  _ familiar. She knows what this is. The bristles scratch against the floor and she remembers. She remembers the cool hands guiding hers, she remembers the lazy afternoons, the busy mornings, and all the in betweens.

Rage crashes over her in waves, and grief follows suit. She is drowning, and as always the girl just watches. The feelings explode into her, a tight ball of fury blooming into a haze of heartbreak. Her skin feels too tight, too raw, each touch amplified by a thousand.

She screams, her head echoing back the silence. She knew control was an illusion but it only resonates in this moment. Her eyes snap open, all there is is white. The frantic twitching of her limbs propel her back, and she realizes the blinding whiteness is a blank canvas. Everything slows down, or maybe she’s sped up. Either way she is frozen, and her ragged breaths spiral through the rooms.

She wants to rip the canvas to shreds, rip  _ her  _ to shreds, but instead, she rips herself to shreds. It’s a loop, one that she stays in, and doesn’t try half as hard as she should to get out of. This time though? She’s done. In her last moment of clarity she leaps forward, bringing the brush down onto the canvas. Shades of yellow bring forth tentative smiles and awkward handshakes. Purples twist into heated breaths and clasped hands. Orange splatters on top of the strokes, just barely taking the shape of the girl's crooked smile. One crushed blue pastel later, it had turned strained and she now recognizes it as the calm before the storm. In a flash, red has taken over the canvas. Shouts that tore their way out of their throats and into the others chest, slamming doors, and left behind keys. It drifts to messages on read, and days without communication, but finally, finally, it ends, in one spot of black, a gaping hole where a girl should be. An empty bed, an empty seat on a couch, an empty notification queue, and an empty house that no longer feels like a home.   


She crumbles. Even with all her work something is missing. She is missing. Tentatively, as if too fast a touch could wipe away the memories, she touches the canvas. A smear. And then another, and another until all that’s left is a smile drenched in.. blood? That’s when it hits her that the taste was not of salt, but muted iron. How fitting she thinks, as far off a door opens, that she would bleed for a girl who worked so hard to make sure she didn’t. She hears the angels calling, “No!” they scream. The girl cradles her and she wonders how they could’ve created a heaven and a hell so perfect.


End file.
